Portable television remote controls are typically powered by batteries with limited life spans. Some remote controls can receive information from external devices, such as televisions or set-top boxes. In order to save battery life, remote controls can poll for information from external devices at predefined times. For example, a remote control might only listen for information only immediately after the user has used the remote control to send a command. One problem with this solution is that external devices may desire to send information to the remote control even when the remote control is not being used by the user. Another solution is for the remote control to listen for information at predefined intervals (e.g., every 5 minutes, 20 minutes). If the predefined interval is too short, however, the remote control battery may drain too quickly. If the predefined interval is too long, the remote control may miss information transmitted by external devices or receive information that is too old if the external device buffers the information until the remote polls it.